C. Thomas

Negro Workers and the CIO

(May 1950)

In the years before the formation of the CIO, when craft
unions dominated the American labor movement, not only the employers
but the bulk of organized labor itself was militantly Jim Crow. White
workers sought deliberately to keep Negroes out of jobs. The trade
unions constituted a hostile barrier to the employment of Negro labor
in the organized sectors of industry and trade. Where obvious
self-interest dictated the necessity of organizing Negro workers, they
were usually shunted off into second-class Jim Crow locals.

Under the circumstances, the Marxist contentions that the future of
Negroes lay with the labor movement and that the only road for workers,
white and black, was solidarity in the struggle against their mutual
capitalist enemy, appeared like lunacy to the majority of Negroes.

The CIO brought a great change. Today about a million and a quarter
Negroes are established in the labor movement with
approximately half-a-million in the CIO. Compared to the pre-CIO days
the present situation represents a great advance. But it is necessary
to recognize that only the first steps forward have been taken. Negroes
still suffer heavy discrimination in industry and in the unions.

A wartime study, published in 1944, disclosed that some 30 national
unions, AFL, Railroad Brotherhood and independent, either excluded
Negroes through constitutional provision and ritual or accorded them
only segregated auxiliary status. Exclusionist provisions by unions
affiliated to the AFL violate its national constitution. Yet, numerous
attempts to invoke disciplinary action have been sidetracked by the AFL
hierarchy with the hypocritical assurance that the problem can best be
solved by “education.” This beneficent approach to its Jim Crow
affiliates is in sharp contrast to the AFL leaders’ ruthless expulsion
in 1936 of unions comprising the Committee for Industrial Organization
for “violating” the AFL constitution because they sought to unite all
workers in a given factory or industry in a single organization.

The Indispensable Cornerstone

The unions which launched the CIO had to deal, from the
beginning, in a forthright manner with the Negro question. Fortunately,
the most powerful of the group, the United Mine Workers, International
Ladies Garment Workers and Amalgamated Clothing Workers, had gained
insight and experience through intensive organizing campaigns in the
early ’30s. Thousands of Negro workers had been recruited without
discrimination and comprised a substantial section of their membership.
The inclusion of all workers regardless of race, color or creed, was
immediately recognized as the indispensable cornerstone of any lasting
union structure in the basic mass production industries. This was
especially true in steel and auto, two of the main citadels of
corporate resistance to unionization.

The United Steel Workers and United Automobile Workers are the
largest and most influential in the CIO. Each contains a large
proportion of Negro members. Their attitude on the race question exerts
great influence on the policy of the CIO and its affiliates. While no
comprehensive survey of the entire CIO can be given within a brief
article, it is possible to give a fairly accurate indication of the
situation of Negroes in the CIO and to draw certain conclusions from
the experience of its major unions.

How Negroes Got into Unions

How the Negroes got into industry and the unions is
essential to an understanding of where they are today. Prior to World
War I the rapidly expanding steel centers of the North relied on
immigrants from Europe for an ever-increasing supply of cheap labor.
Negro labor was concentrated in the South, particularly in the
Birmingham region. The war shut off immigration and subsequent
restrictive legislation dried up that source of supply.

The steel industry then turned to the South for its cheap labor
supply, recruiting thousands of Negroes for its northern mills. In the
two decades from World War I to the launching of the CIO, Negro labor
in basic steel more than tripled. In the 30’s between forty and fifty
thousand Negroes were employed in basic steel production. This was a
factor to be reckoned with in the calculations of the CIO leaders. It
would have been impossible to organize basic steel without tacit
support from the Negro labor force.

Very few Negroes were employed in the automobile industry prior to
World War I. The 1910 census figures show only 569 Negroes in a total
labor force of 105,759 automobile workers. An acute labor shortage
during the war attracted thousands of southerners, white and colored,
to the automobile industry center in Detroit. This mushrooming industry
continued to absorb Negro labor so that by the middle 30’s between
twenty and thirty thousand Negroes were employed in auto plants.

An additional factor that made the race question a key issue in the
organization of auto was the Ford Motor Company’s potent bid for the
sympathy and support of Detroit’s Negro community. Ford made a practice
of hiring Negroes to the extent of 10% of his labor force. These jobs
were distributed primarily through Negro ministers who in turn were
expected to bolster the ferocious anti-union policy of the Ford Motor
Company and deliver the Negro vote to Harry Bennett, head of the
notorious Ford Service Department. Although Ford rarely departed from
the accepted racial occupation pattern of confining Negroes to the
dirtiest, heaviest and most dangerous jobs, the fact that he hired so
many colored workers established his reputation as a “friend” of the
Negro. He tried to use this reputation to the very last to prevent
organization but failed. By the time the UAW leadership tackled Ford,
it had already demonstrated in action its adherence to the CIO policy
of non-discrimination and thereby gained the active support of
prominent Negro spokesmen who played an important role in critical
stages of the 1941 strike which brought Ford into the UAW fold.

Basic Racial Patterns Unchanged

Although the CIO has organized Negro workers without
discrimination, it has done little to alter the racial occupation
patterns imposed by capitalist operation. Unionization found the
Negroes concentrated in the heaviest, dirtiest, most dangerous and
poorest paying jobs. By and large, that is where they remain. This is
true of steel, auto, mining, textile, tobacco, etc. The Negro is
unskilled, semi-skilled, common laborer, while the white is mechanic,
machine-tender, skilled maintenance and white-collar worker.

The persistence of this inequality must in large measure be laid at
the door of the CIO leadership. Negroes were able to penetrate industry
in large number only during periods of acute labor shortage. It is in
such periods that the greatest advances can be made. The CIO organized
the Negro worker without discrimination but neglected to take advantage
of the wartime opportunity for eradicating the discriminatory
employment practices of the bosses. The wartime policy of national
unity, equality of sacrifice and the no-strike pledge left employers
free to exercise discriminatory practices in the field of hiring,
transfer and promotion.

Most union agreements in the mass production industries contain
departmental or occupational seniority clauses. Plant seniority clauses
are very rare. While department seniority protects the Negro worker in
case of layoffs within the department, it makes no provision for
upgrading or promotion to more desirable or higher paying jobs in other
departments. This tends to freeze Negro workers in the least desirable
departments.

The wartime labor shortage provided CIO leaders with their greatest
opportunity to lead Negro workers out of this blind alley. Despite the
acute shortage many employers refused to hire Negroes, others persisted
in maintaining the traditional racial occupation pattern of industry
while a few made token moves infringing on this pattern by upgrading
Negroes to hitherto all-white departments. To the credit of many
national and local CIO leaders it must be said that in the latter case
they moved with vigor to quell any Jim Crow strikes or demonstrations
designed to exclude Negro workers. Usually a threat of drastic
disciplinary action was enough to send the “rebels” back to work.

Negroes Took the Initiative

Where the employer took the initiative or could be
induced to hire or upgrade Negroes into all-white departments the CIO
threw the support of the union, if necessary, to make it stick. But
such cases were rare. In the over-all struggle for equal opportunity of
employment the Negroes themselves took the initiative through the
March-On-Washington Movement. This promising movement proposed to
substitute mass action for ineffective pleas, petitions and pious
wishes. With active support from the CIO it would have been invincible.
But the CIO leaders remained aloof. They were unalterably committed to
a policy of collaboration with the Roosevelt administration and would
do nothing to embarrass their “friend” in Washington.

However, the mere threat of a nation-wide march on Washington
sufficed to compel Roosevelt to issue the executive order establishing
the Fair Employment Practices Committee. Inadequate as it was, the FEPC
represented the greatest concession wrested from the government in the
struggle for Negro rights during the war. It demonstrated the
superiority of militant methods of struggle over the moral preachments,
appeals to patriotism, legislative lobbying and “education” practiced
by the liberals and labor leaders.

Bolstered by the FFPC, the Negroes made some notable advances during
the war. The number of Negroes employed in industry increased. Jobs
hitherto reserved to whites were opened up to Negro workers. These
gains were most marked in the section of industry organized by the CIO.
But the number of Negroes who succeeded in breaching the Jim Crow
occupation pattern was too small to make any appreciable alteration in
the basic pattern. Today the racial occupation pattern remains
essentially what it was before the war.

Meanwhile, the presence of Negro members in significant numbers,
their active participation in union affairs plus the exigencies of
internal union politics has made them an important factor in the key
unions of the CIO. In most steel locals, for example, Negroes function
as officials, executive board members, stewards, committeemen, etc. The
same is true in auto and other CIO unions with substantial Negro
membership. It is above the local level, however, where the top brass
is further removed from direct contact with the ranks, that Jim Crow
rears its ugly head.

The “Jim Crow in Reverse” Argument

While a Negro is usually appointed in each district of
the steel union, it is the practice to assign him a special department
where his duties do not bring him into direct contact with the employer
as a representative of the national organization. In the UAW repeated
demands have been made for Negro representation on the International
Executive Board. The Board is composed of regional directors and
executive officers who represent the national organization in
negotiations and disputes with the corporations.

The demand for Negro representation has been met by Reuther and his
close associates with the charge that this constitutes “Jim Crow in
reverse.” The specious argument is made that advancement to top union
positions must be made solely on the basis of “ability.” This is
poppycock. There are Negro leaders in the UAW as able as any now
occupying top positions in the union. Underlying the “Jim Crow in
reverse” argument is an unwarranted concession to white chauvinism.

This concession to prejudice sterns from the pattern adopted by the
United Mine Workers Union in organizing the coal miners of the deep
South. In setting up mixed locals in which Negroes constituted a
majority, it was arranged for the president to be a white and the
vice-president a Negro. The president was the official who represented
the men in meetings with the employers. By this system, corporation
executives were spared an affront to their Jim Crow prejudices.

When the UMW organized steel the same system was adopted for the
mixed locals of the South and extended into the North—with harmful
consequences. Prejudiced white workers are quick to sense the attitude
of the leaders. Supervisory personnel are emboldened to practice
discrimination in a hundred insidious and devious ways. Rising
unemployment sharpens the competition for jobs. Exacerbated friction
can lead to dangerous explosions. The complacent attitude of
International Presidents like Reuther and Murray who feel they have
discharged their obligation by giving lip service to the struggle for
Negro equality and by using a few Negroes as window-dressing to display
their “good will” acts as a spur to chauvinism. At this juncture, Negro
representation on leading bodies of CIO unions—and not for show-case
purposes—is the minimum required to demonstrate the seriousness of
union leaders in the struggle against industrial Jim Crow.

In the Taft-Hartley Era

Labor is now living in the Taft-Hartley era. The
business unionism of Gompers and Green and the mossbacks of the AFL
Executive Council is a relic of the past.. Every major struggle
involves the unions in conflict with the government which functions as
the executive agency of the capitalist ruling class. Politics has
become a life and death matter for the unions. And the Negro question
is, above all, a political question. If the union leaders were unaware
of it before, the so-called Republican-Dixiecrat coalition has forcibly
reminded them of the fact.

The CIO campaign to organize the South ran smack into the Negro
question in all its political and social ramifications. Lacking a
correct policy on this crucial problem, the drive has bogged down. The
Southern drive was undertaken with a view toward breaking the political
monopoly of the Dixiecrats by exerting the pressure of organized labor
on the Democratic Party. The Southern Negro is extremely sympathetic
toward the CIO. But he is disfranchised, along with a large proportion
of white workers, and in addition is subjected to an atmosphere of
intimidation and terror. A policy based on an appeal to support “good”
Democrats against “bad” Democrats cannot arouse much hope or
enthusiasm. For in the South, even the “best” of the liberal Democrats,
as witness the campaign pronouncements of a Claude Pepper, are Jim Crow
practitioners.

The Republican-Dixiecrat coalition is a political fusion of northern
capital and southern demagogy. Northern capital bolsters Southern
reaction. Southern reaction upholds Taft-Hartleyism. As long as labor
adheres to the fraudulent two-party system, monopoly capital can’t
lose. To organize the South while supporting the Democratic Party is a
more formidable task than Hercules faced in cleaning the Augean
stables. And Philip Murray is no Hercules!

Education, Organization, Leadership

The CIO top brass is fond of emphasizing that Jim Crow
will be conquered through education, organization and leadership. That
is true in the abstract. But the heart of the question is, what sort of
education, what type of organization and what kind of leadership?

In steel, the Murray machine initiated an educational campaign
through the establishment of a Civil Rights Committee. The committee
calls various conferences to promote ... Truman’s civil rights program.
The emphasis at these conferences is on legislative lobbying, letter
writing and CIO-PAC types of political action. The sum total of
Murray’s educational program consists in covering up and whitewashing
the Truman administration’s failure to deliver on its election promises
and drumming up support for the election of Trumanite Democrats next
fall. This sort of “education” is worse than useless.

Effective education in the struggle against Jim Crow must lay bare
the real function of racial discrimination, must expose its capitalist class
character and the role it plays in dividing and weakening the working
class in its struggles for emancipation from exploitation and wage
slavery.

Effective organization must be based on the recognition of the class
division in capitalist society, the knowledge that Democrats and
Republicans alike represent the interests of the ruling capitalist
class, and the necessity for an independent working class party to
carry forward the struggle of exploited labor, black and white.

Effective leadership can be provided only by those who recognize the
revolutionary implications of the struggle for Negro equality and are
prepared to lead such a struggle to the very end.

The entrance of Negroes into industry during the first World War
coincided with the beginning of the decline of capitalism as a world
system. Encompassing a brief span of 30 odd years this period has been
marked by major convulsions: wars, depression, colonial revolts and
socialist revolutions. It required a major split in the American labor
movement and the tumultuous rise of the CIO before Negroes gained
admission to the unions on a near-equal basis. The same period
witnessed a gigantic growth of union membership to some 16,000,000
strong. These tremendous historical events are a harbinger of what is
to come.

Taft-Hartleyism and Jim Crow are twins. Decaying capitalism, which
exudes the poison of racial discrimination from every pore, is bent on
using its political monopoly to destroy the labor movement. Necessity
will drive the American working class onto the political arena to
engage the enemy in mortal combat. They will learn the truth enunciated
by Marx: Labor with a white skin cannot emancipate itself where labor
with a black skin is branded. Working class solidarity, fertilized in
the womb of the CIO, will see its fruition in the conquest of political
power and the establishment of a workers and farmers government. The
death knell of Jim Crow will have sounded!